The motives of Silence seem to be almost as pure as Joan of Arc’s. The debate between nature and nurture is at least weird: it is about Merlin and his veganism and not plainly about Silence. In the case of Silence, nurture has some altruist reason, as preserving her inheritance –it does not seem that altruist now, but it is some family duty at the time. The story is far from sexual motivations and, as always in feminine transvestites, the clothes are for some other purpose different of a sex or gender matter. The Eufeme affair is just collateral damage and a tool to put a little of drama in the story.
The male transvestite in the “Silence” impersonates a nun and his disguise is a trick to get to Eufeme, the queen, who is not precisely a trustable woman. For a male dressing as woman could be only a trick or joke; women transvestism obeys to higher purposes, extreme circumstances and it ends to be a proof of virtue, just as in the case of Jeanne d’Arc.The end of the book is interesting: Silence, back in her feminine form, marries the king who was her former boss and friend and becomes the queen. Is this a sign that virtues are always proper of males?
The word ‘virtue’ comes from the Latin word ‘virtus’ that also derivates from ‘vir’, the Latin word for man.
Are virtues conceived as a primary masculine quality and only accidental and scarce among women? Silence male actions are praised and she is considered a virtuous woman…
I would disagree that the Nurture-Nature debate regarding Merlin is out of place. First of all, Nurture does have some altruistic motivation in Merlin's adaptation to eating herbs - he has to survive in the wilderness somehow! And it is, in fact, Nature's triumph over Merlin that leads to his capture, which we may almost say Nature effected in order to bring about Silence's eventual reveal.
ReplyDeleteThis argument also occurs in a place when we are nearing the end of the poem. It certainly behooves Heldris to remind his readers of the larger allegorical issues at stake, so that they will recall that the revelation of Silence's nature is a big deal and a big win for Nature. But Silence seems to be pretty okay with his current state. For all that he is pining away in love, he is content now with his upbringing and does not seem to mind it at all. Heldris had to find a different arena in which to bring Nature and Nurture back into play because discussing Silence further at this junction would be overkill.
What I found most interesting about the Merlin episode is that, as our secondary reading noted, his "Nature" as a human being is expressed as a distance from nature, which, as a wild forest man he had embraced. He is compelled to eat the cooked food, and not the raw, the wine and not just water. By following his Nature he moves closer to civilization and further from nature.
ReplyDelete